Letters Read online

  So I needn’t say “frankly” in preface to the following: that I don’t really know where I ought to be. You must be as well aware of it as I am. My intuitions are more made up than my mind.

  I wrote to Sam Monk because both Gug. and Viking money will have run out by March, to ask whether he knew of any jobs for me. He was very solicitous, and he inquired at Harvard. I’ve not definitely turned anything down. It’s still possible that I may go to Harvard. Meanwhile I’ve applied for a Gug. renewal. My difficulty is explained by the fact that I worked eight months at a book I’ve decided to put aside. Since October, I’ve finished about two-thirds of Augie March—an on the whole much better performance. If I’m to live by my writing I can’t afford such eight-month losses.

  So I don’t know what we’ll be doing. Economically, it might be just us well to stay in Europe, though we’re coming home for a visit in September. Europe is not the Great Good Place for me, though with all my dissatisfaction it has taught me a great deal about what and who I am. That is, really, what and who others are. These discoveries are not true when condensed, so that I’ll leave to wait till fall to tell you of them, and to hear yours and see you again, a pleasure I often have in daydreams.

  Yes, I’d like to be in Mpls. again; I need a pied-à-terre. But I know it would be temporary again. I am very hostile, I tell you once more what you surely know, to “literary culture.” I think of it as an enemy. I am not thinking only of des gisants funestes [40] like H[untington] Brown and a host of others who have made literature originate in itself, for whom even belief is literature.

  And, along with “literary culture,” the other vanities of “culture” that have no meeting with chaos. If there’s anything that dwelling in this French park has shown me it is the blindness that a great cultural inheritance bequeaths. The idea of a university, as Ortega says, is in classicism; the true life of poetry, as he also tells us, is in shipwreck.

  That’s been the teaching of my intuitions, too, and that’s why I spoke of Jonah. I haven’t been able to resist safety, and I haven’t been able to rest in it. I know that if I don’t get the Guggenheim, I’ll jump at the chance to be at Mpls. The greatest charm of it would be living with you once more. But I know also that I’ll jump again; that I couldn’t permanently stay.

  Because I understand that the best of me has formed in the jumps.

  The theory of it apart, I’m moved at being wanted by people who know I disagree with them and disapprove of what they do, people like Leonard [Unger] and [William Van] O’Connor.

  We’re going to Salzburg in April, in May to Venice, in June to Rome, and we’re sailing at the end of August. Will you be in the East around Labor Day? If you could be, what great pleasure to see you in New York.

  Tumin is conducting a tour from Princeton and I expect him here in July. He’s written kindly to me, but we’ve had a sort of quarrel over I[rving] Howe.

  Best love to all of you,

  PART TWO

  1950-1959

  And now here’s the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.

  —The Adventures of Augie March

  1950

  To Robert Hivnor

  [n.d.] [Paris]

  Dear Bob:

  I wish I had stayed in a temperance hotel with the temperate. Although I don’t judge the inverted with harshness, still it is rather difficult to go to London thinking of Dickens and Hardy, to say nothing of Milton and Marx, and land in the midst of fairies. My publisher is one; all the guests at his cocktail party were ones; all the Horizon people, with the single exception of a man who apparently suffered from satyriasis, likewise at their cocktail party. This single exception was chasing Sonia Brownell Orwell, who didn’t appear to have a husband on the point of death. It was confounding. Modern life is too much for me. Bien, je m’en fous [41]. I enjoyed London anyway. There was a fire in the Covent Garden basement, carol-singing in Trafalgar Square led by a spontaneous girl who stood on the base of a statue. And the Channel was rough both passages, but the second time I came off dull but victorious at Dieppe.

  [Paolo] Milano writes from Rome that [Eric] Bentley has become a Titoist. He wants to know why, but without being able to say, I feel it’s very natural. That’s all the news I have for you about the theatrical world. Except that I went to Camus’s new play which was grievously bad. Also to Le Bossu at the Marigny, which just couldn’t resolve to be corny enough and so lost its opportunity for redemption by fun. [ . . . ]

  Incidentally, Dick Ellmann is trying to get me a Briggs-Copeland fellowship there [at Harvard]; I have no job for next year, not much money, and if I fail to get a Guggenheim (not competing with you; I’m among the applicants for renewal) I’ll be in a rather bad spot.

  Anita leaves her job in April and we go to Salzburg for a month. Afterwards, Italy. After that (early September) home. Everything’s very indefinite and déraciné. Except Augie March, which I work on with great satisfaction every day. I’m very pleased that you liked chapter 1. Hope you will the next. [ . . . ]

  The snapshot was a succès fou with Gregory and the rest of us. Your son’s very handsome.

  All the best to you both (all three),

  Robert Hivnor had been a colleague and friend of Bellow’s at the University of Minnesota. Eric Bentley (born 1916), playwright, critic, cabaret performer, translator, has been for fifty years the preeminent historian of modern European drama; he and Bellow were also colleagues at University of Minnesota. Albert Camus’s “grievously bad” play was Les Justes.

  To Monroe Engel

  January 12, 1950 Paris

  Dear Monroe:

  I have just sent out a stack of mss. with my Guggenheim application and asked H. A. Moe to forward it to you when his committee have done feeding their spirits on it. Part of the Crab and the Butterfly, which I put aside for Augie March is in the bundle, four or five chapters out of the middle of it; when you’ve seen them you’ll perhaps feel easier about my having given over—for the time being. As for Augie March, I’m having such an enthusiastic labor with it that it hadn’t occurred to me—in my daily stumpbombings—how a reader might feel about risking limbs in the clearing. No, I don’t believe it has dropped or changed its pace in the fifty thousand words of it I’ve done so far. You judge for yourself, but please remember you’ll read it exactly as first written, without a single alteration. Ch. 1 in PR was rewritten once.

  There are reasons of all sorts for coming back, not all of them financial, but the financial in themselves weigh a good deal. I’ve put in for a Guggenheim. I don’t think Mr. Moe cares much for me (Alfred, perhaps, may be in a position to put in a word) and I don’t feel that I’m going to get anything from him. I have written to Prof. Ball at Queens College to ask for a job and shall have to wait for his answer before I can ask you to do anything about an apartment. The only other prospect I have is, queerly enough, at Harvard—the Briggs-Copeland Fellowship. There’s nothing else. And life in Paris is not cheap; I’d have to go to work for UNESCO or something like that if we wanted to stay.

  I’m going to Salzburg in April. By that time the first draft of Augie will be ready, please God, and I can start the grinding—provided the noise of Germans cheering for Thomas Wolfe isn’t too loud. [ . . . ]

  What’s Isaac doing, by the way? I never hea
r from him at all. Is it the sad lot of the boyhood friends of analysands coming to me? Well, when you see him tell him that we love him and think of him often. Is he writing a novel? Have you seen what he’s doing? What is it like?

  Best to everyone,

  To Alfred Kazin

  January 28, 1950 Paris

  Dear Alfred:

  A little list of disloyal people who are astonished at my wanting to come back to America will be just the thing, just the thing. It’s also rather interesting that people don’t believe Balzac, Flaubert and Stendhal when they write of French life and of Paris—much less Dostoyevsky in that queer little book called Le Bourgeois de Paris. They prefer to trust Henry James, or Henry Miller or even Carl Van Vechten and all that happy American throng that lived around the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. But if Stendhal were alive today, he might very conceivably choose to live in Washington, D.C.—considering what has become of his beloved Milan. And of this I am sure: that he would do as I do with his copy of Les Temps Modernes, that is scan the latest sottises, observe with brutal contempt the newest wrinkle in anguish and then feed Simone’s articles on sex to the cat to cure her of her heat and give the remainder to little G[regory] to cut dollies from; he can’t read yet and lives happily in nature.

  But, a few lines of business. My news has reached you in a confused and debased state. I merely asked Monroe and/or Henry to inquire of you what the situation was. I didn’t mean for them to shake you with a storm of demands in my name. I don’t think you ought to write to Moe. I’ve already sent him a batch of mss., and if merit has anything to do with his decision—which I understand is not strictly the case—there ought to be no question about the decision. I know J. F. Powers was refused a renewal recently, however, and Jean Stafford told me last summer that Moe had called her in to discuss Powers with her. Her praise didn’t help. But this reveals that there is some sort of Prague Arcana in use along 5th Ave., and I thought you might know something about it. As for the teaching, that too came to you with more hot and urgent sweat than it originally issued with. Ça n’est pas tellement grave [42]. I’ll try Sarah Lawrence, but it would give no joy. What I principally need is a shack wherein to finish a book. After it’s done, I’d as lief work in a factory as remain in what are called intellectual milieux—my heart’s abhorrence, they’re coming to be. Wherever there are people who still desire something, even if they are after false gods. Perhaps you know a kind of industrialist who would give a writer still in fair physical condition a job in a cannery or mattress factory. I’m not joking.

  I still hope I’ll soon be able to read your book. Preparatory to going to Salzburg (April) I have picked up On Native Grounds and read large parts of it again with great pleasure. Also, I thought your piece in PR superb—the one on Melville. It ought to be compulsory reading in all graduate schools. Apparently [Richard] Chase and [Cleanth] Brooks (Understanding Fiction—Warren is to blame too, alas, who should know better) are convinced that to write a story is to manipulate symbols. What are they going to make young writers in the colleges think but that they daren’t their most natural step but must learn “mythic” footwork? This is what happens when literature itself becomes the basis for literature and classics become crushers.

  Eh, bien . . . write me some good news.

  Yours,

  To Monroe Engel

  March 26, 1950 Paris

  Dear Monroe:

  My prophetic heart has stolen all the bases; I didn’t get a Guggenheim, for reasons best understood somewhere else. I shall have to make do without, but energetically, and I suppose one can’t expect to have first lick, always, at fortune’s spoon. Had I gotten the Guggenheim we’d have moved to a cheap town on the Côte d’Azur, for the Fellowship money wouldn’t have been enough to live on in the expensive States. But now it seems to me that I’d better move into New York, and I’d consider it a great favor if you’d inquire of Mr. Guinzburg about a flat: the location doesn’t matter too much, and I understand, furthermore, that it had better not matter—one’d better not be too particular. Large and cheap; I’m used to having a room off to one side. Perhaps we could get something in Isaac’s neck of the woods. That would be a considerable advantage to wives and children, since I’m told the Rosenfelds feel their exile from the Village very keenly.

  I’ve decided on New York because odd jobs can be found there teaching, and you can’t get reviews to do unless you show your face in editors’ offices. I’m not at all worried about making out; I have quite a few stories that may be saleable and, if you have no objections, I can try to get a few chapters of Augie March published in Commentary.

  The great annoyance about the Guggenheim rejection is that it will slow up work on my novel.

  Before I leave Paris, on Friday of this week—to go to Salzburg for a month—I will send you a few more chapters of it. It is, as you’ll see, an episodic book. I have done about a hundred thousand words and, when I come to a natural resting point, I plan to take a pause and consider the maturer part of it. Do you think the book could be published up to that resting point, the remainder to follow in a year or so? Of course, it remains to be seen whether you like it at all. I’ll be waiting, a little uneasily, at Schloss Leopoldskron, Salzburg, for your opinion. Please remember, as you read it, that I generally put everything that strikes me as relevant into a first draft and shrink it afterwards; I wouldn’t have sent the mss. out in such rough condition if it hadn’t been necessary to support my Guggenheim application.

  I’ve written another letter to Harold Taylor [president of Sarah Lawrence] explaining that I had already sent him, last January, a curriculum vitae. Of course he doesn’t want to hire people he’s never seen. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to see me until the first week of September, when I come back. I’ve asked him, however, to consider me for some part-time work next fall. He will have made all his full-time appointments long before then. I’m very grateful to you, Monroe, for the trouble you’ve taken for me. And hope to show that my gratitude is made of pretty durable material.

  All the best,

  To Henry Volkening

  March 26, 1950 Paris

  Dear Henry:

  [ . . . ] And now I’ll have to unstrap that batch of stories. I didn’t want to do that because to work them over would take time from Augie March. But, on a whisper from my prophetic heart, I started a new one even before the refusal from Guggenheim arrived. Another query: a letter from prison (in Paris) written by an Italian black marketeer and con man to a rich American he had been steering around the night clubs, explaining why he is in jail. Rather curious. But perhaps the New Yorker will one of these days break precedent and publish something bizarre. I’ve gotten quite a lot of comment about the story in Harper’s [Bazaar] from people who think more of it than I ever did.

  In writing to Monroe, I’ve set afoot a campaign to have the first large part of Augie March (about a hundred twenty thousand words) published as the contracted novel. It is an episodic book. The first half of it stands by itself. And I thought I had better unmask my motives now, since it is obvious that these hundred twenty thousand represent only one half of the total. I could never put over this half as the whole, saying nothing about the rest. If Viking wants to wait for the whole quarter of a million words, perhaps it will extend my subsidy for another six months. Probably would see me dead first, common sense says to me, speaking low. [ . . . ]

  All the best,

  The story in Harper’s Bazaar was “By the Rock Wall,” which Bellow apparently lost and had rewritten.

  To Monroe Engel

  April 30, 1950 Paris

  Dear Monroe:

  I’m very pleased, very happy, about your response. While I didn’t exactly take the Guggenheim rejection as literary criticism—how can such an organization criticize—I couldn’t help, nevertheless, feeling uneasy . . . on the side where my judgments sometimes fail me, the helpless side. But then there’s the stronger side, and there I knew that the course I’d been following for a lo
ng time was at last producing results, that I’d put my hand strongly to a good thing and was making it resound. Or, putting it another way, I believe I’m beginning to make some real excavations. I’m delighted that you agree. Ad n[auseam], I’ve notified you that you were going to see the raw mass. You hear that far too often, I’m sure. And I must say that although I have some kind of instinctive sense of what the finished thing will be, I’ve never had such a mass to knead and shape either, and I don’t know how I’ll fare with it. The abundance gives me confidence, however, and wherever that and the life, the feeling of the book, are connected there’ll be no pruning. But I haven’t read over what I’ve done, consecutively. When I do, I may very well share your objections. My own figure for the shape of the book is that of a widening spiral that begins in the parish, ghetto, slum and spreads into the greater world, and there Augie comes to the fore because of the multiplication of people around him and the greater difficulty of experience. In childhood one naturally lives as an observer. And it may be that Augie doesn’t sufficiently come forward at first; but in my eyes, the general plan of the book—its length—justified this. I have a further part in mind for almost all the characters so far introduced, even the ones like Kreines and Five Properties. And Sylvester will be a considerable Machiavellian too.

  Another two hundred pages, and the design will be almost entirely visible; and there will be still more—the second part will be again as long, with sections on the war and the life of a black-marketeer in Europe and a final, tragic one on the life of the greatest Machiavellian of them all, Augie’s brother Simon. Sometimes I’m not sure that Augie will bear so much traffic, and again think that he must bear it, be sent through the bitterest of contemporary experience if my purpose is to have its real test. In any case, publishing a first volume would give me a breather in which to mature the sequel. But we can discuss this, as you propose, in September, when I’ll have a good deal more to show.